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USB port may stop working after removing or inserting USB device

Article ID:817900
Last Review:May 19, 2005
Revision:5.4

SUMMARY

When a USB device is repeatedly inserted and removed, the USB port may stop responding. This article describes how to resolve this problem with a unresponsive USB port.

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SYMPTOMS

If you quickly and repeatedly insert and remove a USB device, the USB port may stop responding. When the port is in this state, it no longer recognizes any USB device.

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CAUSE

This problem may occur because of a race condition in the Selective Suspend feature of USB. Microsoft and the hardware vendors that manufacture the chips that are used for USB have investigated the problem. However, the results have been inconclusive because of the intermittent nature of the problem.

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RESOLUTION

To resolve this, follow these steps:
1.Start Device Manager.
2.On the Action menu, click Scan for New Hardware.
If this does not resolve the issue, you have to restart the computer. In some cases you must use Device Manager to disable then re-enable the device to get it to recover from this unresponsive condition.

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WORKAROUND

Important This section, method, or task contains steps that tell you how to modify the registry. However, serious problems might occur if you modify the registry incorrectly. Therefore, make sure that you follow these steps carefully. For added protection, back up the registry before you modify it. Then, you can restore the registry if a problem occurs. For more information about how to back up and restore the registry, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
322756 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756/) How to back up and restore the registry in Windows


To prevent this problem for server products where power management is not important or required, you can disable the selective suspend feature of USB. To do this, you must modify the following registry entry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\USB
Entry: DisableSelectiveSuspend
Type: DWORD
Value: 1 disables selective suspend. 0 enables selective suspend
Note If this registry key is not present, you must create it.

This setting affects all USB host controller drivers in the system. If the DisableSelectiveSuspend value is set to 1, the selective suspend feature is turned off and the Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power check box does not appear on the Power Management tab for the USB Root Hub.

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STATUS

Microsoft is researching this problem and will post more information in this article when the information becomes available.

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APPLIES TO
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP1
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition (32-bit x86)
Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition (32-bit x86)
Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition (32-bit x86)
Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Web Edition
Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition for Itanium-based Systems
Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition for Itanium-Based Systems
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1

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Keywords: 
kbprb KB817900

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